Background
Like the Coal Creek War a decade earlier, the Fraterville Mine
explosion of 1902 devastated the Coal Creek watershed. As they had
done after the Coal Creek War, miners and their families rebuilt
from the ashes of the Fraterville Mine explosion. New miners
and their families moved to the Briceville-Fraterville-Coal Creek area, which soon
regained its position as the most populated area in Anderson County,
Tennessee.

National Register
plaque

The Cross Mountain Miners' Circle will be
dedicated on the 100th anniversary of the mine disaster at a free public
tour on December 9, 2011. The National Register plaque will be
installed at the cemetery.

View of beautiful Cross Mountain
from Interstate 75 North
in Tennessee today
(6 June 2007)

Increased public awareness from disasters like Fraterville, resulted in
the formation of the U.S. Bureau of Mines in 1910. Dr. Joseph A. Holmes
was appointed as the first Director with a mandate from Congress as
follows:

It shall be the province and duty of said Bureau to make
diligent investigation of the methods of mining, especially in relation to
the safety of miners and the appliances best adapted to prevent accidents,
the possible improvement of conditions under which mining operations are
carried on, the use of explosives and electricity, the prevention of
accidents, and to make such public reports as the Secretary may direct,
with the recommendations of the Bureau.

Knoxville and the surrounding areas were able to
rebuild after the Civil War faster than many parts of the South due in large
part to the manufacturing and mining jobs created by the Knoxville Iron and
Coal Company. Cross Mountain was one of their mines and it opened in 1888.
By 1911, the Cross Mountain Mine had two power plants to generate
electricity for the operation. The main entries and haul ways of the mine
were lit by electric incandescent light. Coal was cut by electric chain
machines and hauled out of the mine by electric motor cars. Miners loaded
the coal onto the cars and used carbide and open oil lamps for
illumination. Mules were used to pull coal cars from remote areas to the
main entries so the electric motor cars could transport the coal out of the
mine.

Friends and relatives awaiting
news
of
the
rescue efforts after
the Cross
Mountain
Mine
explosion in Briceville
on December 9, 1911

Prior to the explosion, Cross Mountain was classified
as a Class “B”, non-gaseous mine. The Coal Creek coal seam at this location
is about 46 inches thick. Main entries were cut to a height of 6 feet and
cross entries were cut to a height of 5 feet. The mine was ventilated by a
7-foot diameter Johnson disc exhaust fan that was mounted in an airshaft
that was 12 feet in diameter and 102 feet deep. The fan had an electric
motor that turned at 300 revolutions per minute and pulled air from the mine
at a rate of 40,000 cubic feet per minute.

Explosion on Saturday, December 9, 1911

The normal workforce for a Saturday consisted of
approximately 125 miners. The fire boss examined the mine that morning and
reported nothing unusual. The day engineer who ran the power plants also
reported nothing unusual. Only 89 men rode the first mantrip into the
mine. The remainder of the workforce remained outside due to a lack of
railroad cars that day.

At 7:20 am, the Cross Mountain Mine exploded. The
night engineer who ran the power plants had gone hunting that morning after
work, but rushed to the mine when he saw dust and smoke rising 100 feet in
the air from the mouth of the mine. The remainder of the workforce had
already boarded the mantrip to enter the mine and begin work, but was able
to escape the explosion. All hands began a rescue operation for those
trapped underground.

Because the fan was damaged by the explosion, another
fan was brought from a nearby mine and assembled at the drift mouth to force
air into the mine. Meanwhile, a bonfire was set at the airshaft to induce
ventilation out of the mine by throwing bales of burning cotton down the
shaft. Also, the fan at the adjacent Thistle Mine where George Camp
was superintendent, normally operated as a
force fan, but its direction was reversed in an attempt to induce
ventilation. Coal pillars had previously been robbed between the two mines
causing the ground adjacent to the mines to cave. The effort at Thistle was
done to draw out afterdamp (i.e. poisonous gases that form after an
explosion) from the Cross Mountain Mine through the caved ground that
separated the two mines. It worked. Afterdamp was detected at Thistle 10
minutes after the direction of the fan was reversed. The success of that
effort was also evidenced by all the rats in the Thistle Mine being killed
by afterdamp.

Americus Alonzo Haynes (Lonzo) and
his son John Frank Haynes
perished in the
Cross Mountain Mine and are buried
together
in Briceville Cemetery.
Photo is Lonzo and his wife Nancy.

Rescue
Operation

One of the miners who responded to the explosion was a
Welsh miner named Phillip Francis. He had led one of the rescue parties at
Fraterville in 1902 and later wrote in a book about his life: A few
years after the Fraterville mine explosion, another explosion took place at
an adjoining mine called Cross Mountain Mine. A message was sent to me to
come at once as they needed rescuers. I left Jellico on the morning train
for Coal Creek. Many other miners were on the train. As I arrived near Coal
Creek, several miners approached and said to me "We have forty miners on the
train going to the mine to help. If you would be our leader we would follow
you into the mine. We wondered why you would risk your life going into a
closed shop Union Mine. We know you have fought our Union for many years
with men having been killed on both sides and the fight still continues". I
said "Yes, I have fought you hard, but when I see my fellow miners in
distress, I cannot fight them for I am one of you".

Bureau of Mines Rescue Crew

On arriving at the mine, the same sorrowful scene
greeted us. Women and children were weeping and all in great distress. Once
again, I must control myself and not let my sympathy weaken me. I had work
to perform. So I went into the mine with those forty men. It was a drift
opening. After going in nearly one mile, I came to a body lying on one side
of the entry. Black damp had taken his life. The air was foul. I met a man
with a small cage with a dead canary in it. I met another man with a gas
mask on and carrying his oxygen with him.

The men with caged canaries,
gas masks, and oxygen tanks that Phillip Francis wrote about were from the
newly formed Bureau of Mines. Engineers and apparatus crews from the
Knoxville Station of the Bureau of Mines had arrived by noon on the day of
the explosion and Director Holmes had arrived by that evening.
Apparatus crews explored and worked in advance of the men erecting
brattices, extinguishing fires, and recovering bodies. A water line was
laid from the top of the airshaft down into the mine. Water from a small
brook was channeled into the pipe creating 125 feet of water head to fight
fires.

Notice left on door by
barricaded
men
advising
rescuers not to shut them in

The first hopes of men still being alive came when
writing on a barricade wall was found that said, “Gone to 22 Right”.
Unfortunately, no miners were found alive there. Hope of finding any miners
alive was fading.

Then, 58 hours after the explosion, a door was found
open at the 18 Left entry that said, “Don’t shut this door, men in 16
Left”. Rescuers found that barricade walls had been built between 16 Left
and 17 Left entries. They tore down the barricade wall and tested the air
with one of their canaries. Inside, they found three men. One of them was
crouched against a wall, smoking his pipe. The others were burned but
alive. Later, two other men who had left the barricaded room to attempt
escape were also found alive. One of the reasons they had selected their
location to await rescue was because it was where tubs had been placed for
mules to drink and provided the trapped miners with a source of drinking
water.

Barricade opened by rescuers
from
the
Bureau
of Mines
58 hours after the
Cross Mountain
Mine explosion
(Note caged canary
used
to test the air)

Farewell messages of Alonzo Wood
and Eugene Ault were written
on a barricade wall in the
Cross Mountain Mine

Ten days after the explosion, another barricade wall
was found with writing on it. Inside, the rescuers found that Alonzo Wood
and Eugene Ault had already suffocated. They also found where those miners
had written their farewell messages on an adjacent barricade wall before
they died. Eugene Ault’s farewell message is inscribed on his headstone in
Briceville Cemetery.

A listing of the 84 miners who were killed and the five
who were rescued at Cross Mountain, and where they are buried, is
attached.

Before he
suffocated in the Fraterville Mine in 1902, Powell Harmon wrote: “Dear wife and children, my time has come
to die. I trust in Jesus. Teach the children to believe in Jesus. We are
all almost smothered. I hope to meet you all in heaven. May God bless you
all wife and children for Jesus sake goodbye until we meet to part no more.
My boys, never work in the coal mines. Henry and Condy be good boys and stay
with your mother and trust for Jesus sake.” Condy Harmon did not
follow his father’s advice. He died in the Cross Mountain Mine explosion
and is buried next to his father in Longfield Cemetery. In the early
1900's, if you wanted to support your family in Coal Creek, you mined coal.
Today, a good education provides students with unlimited opportunities for
professions, like Powell Harmon’s great-grandson who graduated from college
and owns a computer software development company.

Click on image to enlarge

Arthur T. Scott and
Theodore (Dore) Irish in a
photo taken several years before
their successful rescue in the
Cross Mountain Mine

(Photo courtesy of James Scott)

Cause of Explosion

Although Cross Mountain was classified as a non-gassy
mine, methane gas was detected during the subsequent investigation at 25
Left entry. Based on the evidence, a roof fall had occurred at that
location which released the gas. The gas apparently ignited when one of the
miners approached to examine the roof fall.

Cross Mountain was one of the first successful rescue
operation led by the Bureau of Mines. They documented what they found,
compiled lessons-learned, and developed methods to reduce the potential for
future disasters. Their success at rescuing the miners at Cross Mountain
led to continued funding and allocation of resources which have resulted in
safer working conditions for miners today.

Farewell message of Eugene Ault
being
read
over
his grave: "Air is not
much now.
All be good
and I
aim to pray to God to
save
me and all
of you. Tell Clarence
to
wear
out my clothes.
Give Bessie Robbins
a stickpin
of mine. Tell
her goodbye." (Clarence was his brother
and
Bessie Robbins was his girlfriend)

LEGACY

Mine safety is now the mandate of the Mine Safety and
Health Administration (MSHA) that led the successful rescue of miners
trapped in the flooded Quecreek Mine in Pennsylvania in 2002. Coal mining
is no longer on the list of most-dangerous professions in the U.S.
In 1911, 2,656 miners lost their lives in the Nation's coal mines. Last
year, 28 coal miners died nationally while producing the coal that provides
over half of the electricity used in this country.

Attempts to portray the Coal Creek miners as
poor and abused do them a disservice. They came to Coal Creek from
as far away as Wales to seek a future for themselves and their families.
Nobody held guns to their heads making them work in the coal mines.
To the contrary, when their neighbors started losing their jobs to the
convict lease system, they literally went to war to protect the mining jobs
in Coal Creek.

The legacy of the Coal Creek miners....fueled the
industrial revolution, abolished the convict lease system in the South, and
made working conditions safer for future miners.... rivals that of any
comparable group its size in history.

Patrick
and Melda Vallalay
with their daughter
Beulah about 1904

Patrick
Vallalay (center standing). His brother Charles died in the 1902
Fraterville explosion and his brother Henry Tate died with Patrick in the
1911 Cross Mountain explosion.

Melda
Vallalay (seated) and her children Beulah, Elnor, Pearl, and Grace, shortly
after her husband Patrick died in the 1911 explosion. Bessie Hatmaker,
Melda's sister, may be the one standing behind her. Bessie later
married Albert Vowell who may have been the young boy standing at the mouth
of a mine during the Coal Creek War,
which appears in
the Tennessee Blue Book, a History of Tennessee.

Miner James Foust holding Clarence,
Laura Foust and little Bertha

Miner Calvin French Leinart

Lewis Teno and
children,
Delsie and Claud

Photo taken at J.T.
Brooks grocery store in Briceville one year before the Cross Mountain Mine
disaster. Three men shown here lost their lives in Cross Mountain: John Polston, 4th from left on the back row; Jim White, 4th
from left on the front row, and Arthur Smith, 2nd from right on
front row

Entrance of Cross Mountain Mine
in Slatestone Hollow
pictured years after the explosion

Remnants still remain of the
old air shaft
at Cross Mountain Mine

Popular Mechanics
Magazine (March 1912) discussing advancements in
mine safety made as a result of the Cross Mountain Mine Rescue operation